Simon & Schuster Shakeup: David Rosenthal Out And Jonathan Karp In

COMMENTS (5)

• Fascinating.

  Comment by flick — Wednesday June 2, 2010 @ 9:14pm EDT  Reply to this post

• Jon’s a great guy, a nice guy, but stingy with the advances unless you’re a supposed “A list” agent – you know, the first name Michael’s/Four Seasons types – Binky; Esther; Mort; Andrew – look up my friend. A BRILLIANT and tireless and inventive marketer which is all to the good for Simon and Schuster.

  Comment by Dexter Key — Wednesday June 2, 2010 @ 9:30pm EDT  Reply to this post

• Jon has been an extraordinary editor to me.

  Comment by Dave Cullen — Thursday June 3, 2010 @ 1:00am EDT  Reply to this post

• Congrats to Jon. He’s a great editor and has a really innate sense of what makes a great read. Also, he has great musical taste.

  Comment by Santa — Thursday June 3, 2010 @ 8:15am EDT  Reply to this post

• Karp is a smart editor and publisher and S&S has been in an identity crisis for years with too many people at the top- Alice, Korda, Rosenthal so i think this is a good thing. But the problem with Karp is that he’s at his best when he’s focused and working closely with authors something that just isn’t possible in a place as corporate and vast at S&S. It didn’t work at RH bc he doesn’t know how to read a room (or a boardroom). He’s outspoken in his criticism of agents (who he thinks view him as an atm machine, no disrespect of course bc its not like they ever add value right?) which has made him no fans. i liked him at 12 but big question mark over him at S&S.

  The Viacom imprints all suffer from the same affliction–they are under pressure to increase revenues by publishing more titles rather than strategically figuring out how to make more money per title and each of the older imprints is basically a cult of personality around one or two people who put a strangehold on younger editors. So they’ve all stagnated and hemorraged talent and leaving them totally out of step with appetites of readers, and with emerging platforms. they have a few bright spots- the reorged gallery and spotlight- but the older imprints all need to have some big shake up. You go in the building and it feels old and stale.

  Maybe Karp is the white knight for S&S but it feels like another idiosyncratic individual replacing the outgoing one.

  Comment by pubcrawler — Thursday June 3, 2010 @ 8:41am EDT  Reply to this post